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my pictures. I turned into the road where dear Gertrude and I got ferns in fall not very long ago but it had been so cut and disfigured I did not recognize the place.  A lovely sad feeling clung to me in spite of the lovely day and an overwhelming sense of life sorrowful changes was uppermost in my heart. I crossed over the fields to the place back of the Alms House where I painted one of my best pictures owned by Mr. James of Baltimore but it too had changed. The pretty trees which were a prominent feature had been cut away and every thing was different. I came home through Ludlums woods and thought it very probable tat I would never want to go there again. My head did not feel much better but I ate a light dinner and felt better during the afternoon. Wrote to Mr. Bachelder and tried to have a more hopeful and restful feeling and really began to have some thing of the cheerfulness that these autumn days used to bring to me. We sat in the Parlor Sara my mother and I when about nine oclock Girards wife who with little Jimmy had been to New York on the Powell came in. Girard had not been at home all day. She was anxious suspecting he was at [[Dressels?]] and she and Sara went down there where she found him in a condition that has utterly discouraged me. Maurice was there also. Sara went in and tried to have him come home and as usual received only insult and irritability from him. She asked Mr. Wood to go home to his wife and children but he informed her he would take care of himself. I regretted she did this but her earnestness and conscientiousness impelled her to do what is of no use except to wear and exhaust her. a feeling of despair comes over me and I pray the good God for strength to meet the trials which seem to thicken about us all 

Saturday Oct. 2. 1880. Went to Rondout this morning and got letters from B. F. Butter, a most interesting one from Booth from Paris giving me an account of the Passion Play he which he had been to see. He had received my letter with an account of Giffords death. I had a most kind letter from Weir also in which he begs me to struggle against my melancholy. I went out back of the cemetery and made a sketch The sunlight is so blinding and the disadvantages of painting out of doors so great that I wonder we do any thing. This afternoon my father and mother went out to Hurley and Sara over the creek. I was left alone and went to my studio where I worked on my water color all afternoon. I think it is improved. Have fought all day against a feeling of discouragement and despair. Weirs letter was a help to me and an encouragement. A disturbing circumstance was seeing in the Corner that they had ordered the grading of Chestnut St. This I fear will subject us to a heavy expense which we are so ill able to bear. 

Sunday 3. Spent a greater part of the day writing. To B. F. Butter ordering a note to the Sec. of the Treasury about my picture, a long